Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

A couple of updates on Cory Booker. Just FYI.

Cory Booker addresses his sexuality (again): 'I’m heterosexual'

"I'm heterosexual."

That is New Jersey Senator Cory Booker's answer to questions about his sexuality, which we apparently still care about in 2018. He addressed the question in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer while discussing a potential 2020 presidential run. The paper stated that in the past, candidates such as Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, have faced similar questions about running for the office as a bachelor.

And this isn't the first time the issue has come up for Booker. According to reports from NJ 101.5, he discussed assumptions about his sexuality with the Washington Post as far back as 2013.​

So, this seems to keep coming up. It does not appear that he wants to keep answering this question as he finalizes his apparent arrangements to run for President.

But wait: what is this?

Rosario Dawson and Senator Cory Booker Spark Dating Rumors After Night Out on Broadway

Washington, meet Hollywood.

Rosario Dawson and Senator Cory Booker have been sparking dating rumors as of late, especially after the two of them attended the Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen together. A source confirmed to E! News that the Daredevil actress and New Jersey lawmaker "appeared to be a couple." In fact, they brought some family members along to the musical as well. The source said Dawson's daughter and Booker's niece were there, too.

After the show, the 39-year-old got onstage and gave a little performance of her own as she sang an impromptu tune that said "I love you" in it.​

This couldn't be posed as a P.R. stunt. Could it?

 

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is heading to Iowa, as he finalizes his plans to throw his hat in the ring.

Sherrod Brown plans Iowa trip as top aide accelerates 2020 prep

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is preparing the biggest step yet toward a potential presidential campaign: a trip to Iowa in the coming weeks, which is in the final stages of planning and will soon be announced, according to four people with knowledge of the trip.

Going to Iowa would be the latest signal from Brown and his wife, Connie Schultz, that he is considering a White House run organized around the “dignity of work,” the theme of his reelection campaign last year. But preparations go beyond public statements as Brown’s longtime aide and current chief of staff, Sarah Benzing works backstage to set up a campaign — with a particular focus on Iowa, where she grew up and worked on a series of congressional, Senate and presidential efforts earlier in her career.

If Brown does decide to run, he will face numerous obstacles. Brown’s potential rivals inside the Senate all started 2019 with more money in their campaign accounts, while former Vice President Joe Biden would try to tap some of the same populist and Midwestern themes. But veteran Democratic operatives point to Benzing as a notably powerful asset for the Ohio senator, given her overall campaign experience and her Iowa ties.​

So it appears that Brown's probable campaign manager is an ace in Iowa and that this will be one of his campaign's big strengths. Also, Brown's central campaign theme will apparently be the "Dignity of work". This will no doubt appeal to many of the same rust belt Reagan Democrat types that Trump hoovered up in 2016 on his way to winning the presidency, which could be interesting.

But it is hard to see how this will appeal to the socialists or the SJW types who seem to constitute the more motivated, activist part of the Democrat electorate just now. Also, Brown will clearly be competing in the establishment bracket of the primary contest, with other contenders probably including Joe Biden, Terry McAuliffe, Amy Kobuchar and probably several others. This will be a crowded bracket and the ability to raise money will be important, as the louder and more interesting voices in the party will very probably be in the socialist bracket, and also in the "Identity politics" and "Political correctness" bracket.

I do not see how this guy succeeds. Nevertheless, much like Elizabeth Warren, this will be a good move to raise some money and to raise his profile within the party. Being able to say you ran for president raises up your stature a notch or two. It appears to me that this is what both of these candidates are actually trying to achieve by entering the fray, as it does not seem that either of them has any plausible chance of winning the nomination.

 

So now 37 year old Representative Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii is running for President. This looks like another 'cameo' campaign, for lack of a better word. Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are two others who have no real chance to win but are running for president apparently for the purpose of raising their political profile and improving their ability to raise money going forward.

Tulsi Gabbard to run for president

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Friday that she is running for president. “I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week,” she said during an interview on CNN's "The Van Jones Show."

Within her party, the three-term congresswoman is viewed as a maverick with a penchant for bucking party orthodoxy. During the 2016 presidential election, Gabbard stepped down from her post as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee so she could endorse Sanders, making her one of the few House Democrats to back the Vermont senator over Hillary Clinton during the primary. She has since been associated with the Sanders movement — in her 2018 reelection campaign, she was endorsed by the Sanders-aligned Our Revolution outside group.

Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul G. Kirk, who was a Sanders surrogate alongside Gabbard in 2016, said it’s likely several candidates who backed Sanders in 2016 will join the field.​

I get it that Gabbard is pretty, she surfs and is regarded as 'cool', and she is a military veteran, and she tends to dance to the beat of her own drummer a little bit. But this is just the sort of candidacy that is going to give this clown car the actual clown car look and feel.

She is not a serious candidate. She knows it and no honest, mininmally informed person will say they do not know it.

So she quit as vice chair of the DNC in 2016 in order to be able to back Sanders. I guess that could mean she is competing in the socialist bracket. However, there is a fourth bracket, which I will now label as "Other" which it might make sense to put Gabbard in. She is just something else.

There will likely be several other competitors in this bracket and in fact the winner of the nomination could come out of this bracket. Trump came out of the "Other" bracket on the Republican side in 2016, and of course he is now the President of the United States. So it could happen also on the Democrat side in 2020 that someone totally unexpected breaks the mold and comes out of left field (not necessarily in an ideological sense) and surprises the world and wins the nomination for the Democrats.

It could happen, but it is not going to be Tulsi Gabbard. At least not in 2020.

 

And now Kirsten Gillibrand.

Gillibrand Makes Big Moves Toward 2020 Campaign

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is moving aggressively toward an expected presidential bid, filling out key staff positions, traveling to key states and nearing a choice on the location for a campaign headquarters, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.​

Is there anyone who really believes that Gillibrand has any real shot at winning the nomination for the Democrats? Really?

I get it that she has a vagina and all and that many Democrats are obsessed with this sort of thing. But she has not distinguished herself at all during her time in the Senate. What is there about her other than that he is a Democrat woman Senator that recommends her to be the Democrat's nominee for president? Maybe that is all that is needed and the other 20+ candidates will not be able to present themselves as having any characteristics that make them any more desirable than this. But I do not think so.

This woman is the ultimate chameleon. Like Hillary Clinton and many other politicians, she will morph into any set of beliefs and will support any policies that she thinks gives her a short term leg up. She was initially elected as a very moderate Democrat, as discussed in the article linked below:

Gillibrand ‘Embarrassed,’ ‘Ashamed’ by Previous Conservative Stances on Guns, Illegal Immigration

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) said in an interview aired Sunday that she is "embarrassed" and "ashamed" by her previous pro-gun position and tough stance on illegal immigration. CBS's "60 Minutes" featured a 12-minute segment on Gillibrand in which interviewer Sharyn Alfonsi pressed the senator to explain why she reversed her position on several policy positions, particularly the Second Amendment and immigration.

Alfonsi noted that the National Rifle Association previously gave Gillibrand an "A" rating and that, as a congresswoman, she used a "family tradition of hunting to appeal to conservative voters in upstate New York." The New York Democrat is now one of the most vocal supporters of stricter gun control in the Senate. "Why the 180?" Alfonsi asked.​

But just last month, she has transformed into a champion of "Identity politics," "Political correctness" and "Intersectionality".

Kirsten Gillibrand’s Invocation of ‘Intersectionality’ Backfires

The senator tried to leverage the political power of a social movement to move herself closer to the presidency.

On December 4, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted something that was consistent with her established mode of communication: It was self-serving; it helped to distance her from her former identity as a lawyer for Big Tobacco and as a Democratic congresswoman from a conservative district who had supported gun rights and opposed any form of amnesty for illegal immigrants; and it wrapped her in the banner of feminism’s most urgent positions.
The tweet—which one can imagine a young staffer enthusiastically proposing—read:

Our future is:

Female
Intersectional
Powered by our belief in one another.

And we’re just getting started.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) December 5, 2018​

{More at the link}
​

Good grief. Is anyone really buying any of this? Of all the Democrat candidates discussed so far, Gillibrand has to be the most blatantly cynical and openly manipulative, with the obvious exception of Hillary Clinton, if she perhaps decides to run again.

The clown car is starting to fill and Gillibrand is in my opinion, a true political clown. Despite her efforts to position herself as an "Identity politics"/Social Justice Warrior type, she will be competing in the establishment bracket along with Joe Biden, Terry McAuliffe, Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar, if all of those people do in fact run. She has no real chance to win the nomination and will almost certainly be out in one of the earliest exit waves, and unless she is out of her mind, she knows this.

This is another cameo candidacy, intended to raise her stature and her fund raising ability. Maybe I should be cheering this on, because it just dilutes the overall Democrat field, and I am not going to be voting for a Democrat this time. But surely we do not need and should not want very many more of these sorts of exploitative and selfish candidates running. Do we?

 

I have encountered Democrat leftist types who talk about her as if they think she is for real. I am not convinced they really believe that. It seems more likely that they are just engaging in virtue signalling - by cheering on every woman candidate - before they move on to other candidates who they truly do believe in.

Of course they may actually end up supporting a woman candidate, but it does not seem to me that they would actually expend their one vote on Gillibrand. Not even close.

 

Chuck Todd and a number of left leaning mass media voices have turned on Bernie Sanders in what appears to be a harsher and less biased (protective) manner than what some people might have expected:

Chuck Todd on Bernie Sanders: 'If you can’t manage a campaign, how do you manage the country?'

NBC's Chuck Todd unloaded on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday, with the "Meet the Press" host asking how the potential 2020 presidential candidate can run the country if he "can't manage" his own campaign. The comments from Todd come after female staffers on Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign have issued a series of sexual harassment allegations against top male campaign staffers, leading the senator to apologize on Thursday.

Todd took exception to the senator's answer while responding to the clip, asking if it could "derail his chances of another presidential bid. "Boy, that is a tough answer to defend because of course, if you are running to be the president of the United States, if you can’t manage a campaign, how do you manage the country? ... That's a tough answer to defend."

"Politically speaking, no potential 2020 candidate has had a worse start to 2019, it looks like, than Bernie Sanders," he later added.​

This is really interesting. Of course some of these same people blame Bernie for weakening Hillary Clinton by running against her so aggressively and so effectively during the 2016 Democrat nominating process. Of course to be fair, that was his job at the time and it was exactly what both of them signed up for. Nevertheless, some of these left leaning politicos and media types believe Bernie contributed significantly to Hillary's loss in the election and are apparently concerned that he could do it again in 2020.

Among Democrats and Republicans alike, much of the activist base can be broken down into two categories: Ideologues and "Just win" pragmatists. Personally, I regard myself as more of an ideologue, which Bernie Sanders clearly is as well. This is why so many people on the Democrat side support him.

But after Trump's win in 2016, there are many Democrat voters who are of the "Just win" - by any means necessary - perspective. These voters are surveying the primary process and asking what could keep the Democrats from defeating Trump in 2020 and at the top of that list is candidates forcing the party and its voters too far to the left. The number one most likely source of such a disaster would be - you guessed it - another late finish in the Democrat primary by Bernie Sanders.

Personally, I like Bernie, although I would never vote for him. He appears to be sincere and I believe that he believes in what he is selling, regardless of how spectacularly wrong he is. At least he is not just trawling out a lot of focus group created platform ideas, the way a lot of these other candidates surely will. Bernie appears to be the real thing. And many Democrat voters appear to like Bernie and agree with his ideas.

So it will be interesting to see how much effort the pragmatist establishment types exert to try to undermine Bernie leading up to the debates this starting this summer. In fact, could it be that 78 year old Bernie Sanders is effectively pressured out of the contest and decides not to run? Personally, I hope he does run, and moreover, I would love it if he wins the nomination for the Democrats.

But first he has to run. Will Bernie run again? I am hoping so, but when I see stuff like this, it makes me start to wonder.

 

Representative Tusli Gabbard (D-HI) published an op-ed in "The Hill" accusing Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and other Democrats of having "Weaponized religion for their own selfish gain." Of course there is no question she is right. But this is a very bold move from a 37 year old congresswoman who has just announced that she will run for the Democrat presidential nomination, who is probably more famous for her surfing pictures than any sort of political achievements, at least so far.

Gabbard-Hirono clash shocks Hawaii

Gabbard, who announced Friday that she has decided to run for president in 2020, made headlines and provoked an irritated response from Hirono earlier in the week by implicitly accusing the senator and other Democrats in an op-ed published in The Hill of having “weaponized religion for their own selfish gain” in their questioning.

While Gabbard did not mention Hirono by name, her fellow Hawaiian clearly saw the op-ed as friendly fire. Hirono, an outspoken critic of President Trump, returned fire in a statement that dinged Gabbard for giving ammo to Trump’s right-wing allies.

Gabbard spokeswoman Lauren McIlvaine in a statement to The Washington Post said Gabbard will “always fight for religious freedom and oppose religious bigotry — no matter where it comes from or to whom it’s directed. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard respects Senator Hirono,” McIlvaine said. She added that “no nominee for public service should be disqualified, either directly or indirectly because of their religion or religious affiliation.”

{More at the link}​

What Gabbard is complaining about is the practice of Senate Democrats trying to disqualify Republican judicial candidates because they are unapologetic, openly practicing Christians. Tulsi Gabbard is a practicing Hindu, so it is not Christianity she is defending, but the constitutional right to free expression of religion, including her own. As she correctly realizes, if Christianity is allowed to be marginalized under the umbrella of non-compliance with the Democrat left's "Political correctness" and "Identity politics" orthodoxy, then it is just a matter of time before all religious expression is effectively banned by people serving in these roles. Which is a spectacularly unwise and bad idea.

Anyway, Gabbard is pushing back against the Democrat left's "Political correctness" and "Identity politics" agenda, just as she enters the presidential race. In fact she was not going to win the nomination this time around anyway, and literally everyone knows it, including her. What she is doing is building her own brand, which could become very interesting in some future presidential contest, maybe in 2028 or 2032, or afterwards. She is very young, after all.

Clearly Representative Gabbard woman is marching to the beat of a different drummer. As a result, it appears that she needs to be categorized in the "Other" category. Gabbard will not win this time around, but she is positioning herself in what could be a very politically fruitful manner in the years and decades to come.